Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Murray Darling Basin) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate notes the continuing failings of the Rudd Government in relation to its Green Loans program (the program), despite the undertakings of the Minister for Climate Change, Energy Efficiency and Water (Senator Wong) of 10 March 2010 to the Senate, including:

(a)

the training and accreditation of thousands more assessors than the Government first promised, had work for, or ever intended to contract;

(b)

systemic failures to process bookings for home sustainability assessments, return assessments to householders in a timely way or pay assessors for work undertaken in a timely way;

(c)

its cancellation of the loans component of the program, having provided only approximately 1 per cent of the 200 000 loans it promised at the 2007 election;

(d)

its failure to finalise additional assessor contracts in a timely manner, leaving thousands of assessors in limbo and/or unemployed and without any offer of Government support;

(e)

delays in its conduct of audits and reviews into the program, including reviews the Minister has indicated would inform the finalising of additional assessor contracts;

(f)

its failure to commit to the public release of these audit and review findings;

(g)

its failure to deliver a promised Green Rewards Card (the card) to householders and its expensive, bureaucratic alternative to the card;

(h)

its failure to implement, following the discontinuation of loans, any mechanism for evaluating the worth of assessments conducted at taxpayer expense; and

(i)

the Minister’s failure to acknowledge, let alone respond, to correspondence.

Question agreed to.